This morning I awoke to the news that Osama bin Laden was dead, murdered by the United States of America in a what appears to have been a heavily fortified compound in Pakistan; more precise details will no doubt emerge over time. The news is currently being presented in such a way as to suggest capture, not death, was the objective, though whether that was in any way realistic is open to serious debate: surely resistance was expected, and so the statement that bin Laden ‘did resist the assault force’ should come as no great surprise.

Although bin Laden was regarded as significant in many western policy circles, serving as a very useful oppositional figure (and one we will no doubt see replaced in a short time), he was not highly regarded by most Muslims, who saw his understanding of Islam as being no less abhorrent than many Christians’ perspectives of Hitler’s understanding of Christianity. His significance lay in substantial measure in his elevation to a position as ‘super-terrorist’ by US Presidents Clinton, Bush (the Lesser) and Obama on the one hand, and every self-serving dictator claiming to be an ally of the USA-led actions against ‘international terror’ on the other: indeed, one might reasonably argue that bin Laden was emboldened by all the attention he received.

In substantial part this way of thinking about bin Laden arose from a racist strand of thought that was articulated in American neoconservative thinktanks, represented most publicly in two different though related books: Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man and Samuel Huntingdon’s The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (Fukuyama has since distanced himself a little from his thesis, though he is still firmly in the neoconservative camp). Huntingdon’s book in particular has been influential well beyond its literary or intellectual merit. His thesis of distinct civilisational or religious blocs – one of them being Islam – that were in competition or even war with one another dominated Bush’s administration, in particular as it suited his own simplistic dualism of good and evil struggling against each another. Although strenuously denied by Obama and especially by his immediate supporters, this kind of thinking has continued without change, albeit in more nuanced form, as the ‘drone war’ amply illustrates.

This thinking is not confined to conservative thinktanks and policy-makers, however, as the cheering crowds outside the White House celebrating bin Laden’s murder demonstrate. There is clearly no understanding of bin Laden’s significance or otherwise beyond American (and to a lesser extent, European) interests, and the conflation of his thinking into ‘fundamentalist Islam’ (as Tony Blair and others called it) simply highlights the paucity of intelligent reflection and comment (for a better assessment, the Independent’s Robert Fisk offers careful engagement with bin Laden and his changing thought in The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East). In fact, bin Laden’s death is largely irrelevant to most Muslims in the Middle East and South East Asia, beyond perhaps removing a stigma that had become attached to idea of Islam – this is how we can read the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s statement that bin Laden’s death has removed one of the causes of violence in the world. Bin Laden was not a cleric, had no formal training in Islamic law, spoke for no government, no substantial movement and had few followers: it is hard to underestimate his irrelevance to most Muslims, who might have agreed with his assessment of the cause of problems faced by Muslims, but disagreed with his proposed methodology for dealing with these problems, as Tony Karon has argued. In so far as localised movements used or use the al Qaida name, whether in Iraq, in the Arabian Peninsula or elsewhere, it was and is always as part of a nationalist or irredentist movement, riding on the coat-tails of a wealthy supporter of attacks against a perceived enemy of Islam. As the name itself suggests (it translates simply as ‘the base’), people don’t really ‘join’ al-Qaida, they simply adopt the name if it suits them at that particular moment in time.

And that is a key issue: these nationalist movements will not go away unless some meaningful compromise or agreement can be reached on issues they are addressing. We might not sympathise with their modes of engagement, but their causes are often at least partially legitimate. None of this is about what we might think of as ‘religion’ in the sense of Islam being a key issue: these are struggles over land, rights, political engagement, freedom and the like, though they may be presented as being about Islam by some. Even bin Laden saw nationalist struggles as significant: one of his most important early demands was the removal of American troops from Saudi Arabia (he saw this as a violation of the land of Mecca and Medina, the two foremost holy cities in Islam), and his aim of defeating America in the same way (he claimed) he had defeated the Soviet Union was at least in part about liberating Muslims from American influence.

So if Americans and Europeans now think that they can begin to relax over the prospect of ‘international terror’, they are very mistaken. US policy in particular is catastrophically misaligned in the Middle East, Africa and South East Asia (where the majority of the world’s Muslims live), proclaiming democracy, whilst propping up regimes that clearly only serve US interests rather than the interests of the people of these countries. For those who hitherto refused to see this reality it has been made very clear over the last year, with two key factors playing a role: the first is Wikileaks and the unprecedented insight into US-policy making it offers, and the second is the ‘Arab spring’, as al-Jazeera elegantly calls the uprisings across the Middle East. Bin Laden was a minor, irrelevant issue in this context: he had not commented significantly on any of the current issues, had not engaged in any noticeable way with the rebellions, and so his murder, whilst perhaps a satisfying act of violent revenge for Americans, serves no useful or meaningful purpose in resolving these wider global conflicts.

After all, US and European policies towards Muslim-dominated countries in the Middle East and South East Asia are unlikely to change simply because bin Laden is now dead, and so rather than this really being the end, this is more likely to be the end of the beginning. So long as Americans and Europeans continue to think in simple dichotomies of good (us) and evil (them), advanced (us) and primitive (them), having rights (us) and threatening our rights (them), and so on, the ‘clash of civilisations’ will continue. Huntingdon thought he was describing a reality, when in fact he was describing a choice – in classic Marxist/Leninist terms we can see this as an ideologically-driven reversal of cause and effect designed to preserve existing systems of dominance. When viewed through a Fukuyama/Huntingdon lens, religion, culture, civilisations all become more important categories of analysis than they deserve to be in the wider struggle for rights, self-determination and freedom. If US and European policy continues to follow a doctrinaire view of the world as split into competing or warring blocs based on misappropriated understandings of religions, civilisations and cultures – note the plurals – rather than understanding the hybridity and connectedness underpinning our world, continuing conflict and equivalent resistance is assured. Sometimes that resistance will take the form of so-called acts of terror. Whether the tears of an Afghan mother or father mourning the death of a child in a drone attack ‘defending American freedom’ are worth the same as the tears of an American mother or father mourning the death of a child in an attack on ‘imperialist invaders’ is an active choice we make. We can make that choice and we can vote for governments that make that choice, but if we choose to prioritise our needs, our understanding of culture, religion or civilisation, then we must always expect that others will contest that. Murdering bin Laden does not help with these choices, rather it is simply more of the same: unless we make choices that subvert the dominant paradigm propogated by those that determine our countries’ foreign policy, this might just be the end of the beginning, rather than the beginning of the end of the clash of civilisations.

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About Michael Marten

Historian, religion scholar, political scientist: European involvement around the world and especially in the Middle East, transnationalism and gender/race/class, church missions, churches' engagement (or otherwise) in movements for justice, the ideology of violent/nonviolent action in international relations.

Thanks, Peter. Indeed: had our governments (media, commentators, thinktanks…) not made bin Laden such an important figure, we wouldn’t be having the nightmares you talk about now. That this is all more of an American freak show than anything of great significance to most Muslims in the Middle East etc. is something we need to remind ourselves of again and again.

You know, one gets the feeling that people from the UK in particular fail to understand just how traumatic 9/11 was for the average American. Now, the better-educated American saw it as a fairly natural effect of US policy and weapon-mongering, and was saddened but unsurprised. *Most* Americans on the other hand believe that propaganda that has been written since colonial days: the US is special, God is with us, we cannot be seriously harmed. And then we were. Where does one fit that into a worldview that does not allow for it? How does one process what one could never imagine happening?

I point all this out to urge you not to overestimate the ability and emotional maturity of Americans in front of the White House: most of them, I believe, saw it not as the death of a bad guy in the dualistic way that you spoke about. I believe they saw it as the death of *that* bad guy who killed our friends and family and caused our first responders to get cancer. We are a simple people, as you the world might have noticed. All the reaction I’ve seen has not been as grandiose as the statements from politicians would suggest. I think those celebration are as simple as “The one who did that is dead now. Good.” And we Americans who do not find this good stay at home and watch the news and the blogs and be discomfited by what we see.

I’m not sure if what you are describing is just the case in the UK: I’ve heard other Americans talk of the same with regard to Germans, French and others. My response would perhaps be to ask, as you do here, why 11.9.2001 became so traumatic? Other countries have experienced large-scale attacks on their people (though admittedly not often on the immediate scale of 11.9.2001) but have not reacted as the USA did. For example, Britain experienced several thousand dead during the so-called Troubles in Northern Ireland, but the UK government did not begin a ‘war on (Irish) terror’ (though it came close to doing so under Thatcher). What you describe (the US is special etc.) is part of the explanation, even if not universally held (as you point out), but I would take it further and argue that this understanding has also led the US to feel it can act with relative impunity overseas – and 11.9.2001 emphatically showed that not to be the case. After all, 11.9. is not just the anniversary of the attacks on NY & Washington, but also the anniversary of the 1973 CIA-led overthrow of the democratically-elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende – there is a tragic symmetry here that, for example, Duchrow and Hinkelammert explored in their 2004 book ‘Property for People, Not for Profit’.

I’m not in the US at the moment, but celebrations at the former-WTC site in NY and elsewhere certainly seem to go beyond what you are describing here. Of course, whether anyone should celebrate the death of another human being is in itself questionable; Simon Barrow has written very intelligently on this today: http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/14686. I do not for a moment doubt that there are a great many Americans who find such celebrations completely inappropriate, whether they agree with this action or not, and perhaps that is what my last point about choices is about?

It is surprising, that Americans who Rebecca quite accurately calls “a simple people” are quite divided over their reactions. The newspaper blares “The US kills Bin Laden” in bold print with a picture of him, while others quietly quote Martin Luther King, Jr: “I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

These are difficult times, as politicians have been playing havoc with people’s emotions and now it almost seems that the right thing to do is to celebrate along with everyone else, it is actually cause for alarm, if you voice anyother emotion but delight. A sticky situation for an ex-pat Green Carder!!

Tina, thanks for taking the time to respond. Yes, it is difficult, and conflicting. I liked this article, which captures the ambivalence some people feel: http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/05/20115352740772938.html. Addressing the underlying issues, which are in substantial measure about creating ways to undo some of the dichotomies and deliberate misrepresentations that form the myth of multiple religions, cultures etc. is key here – very few of us have singular identities, and even if this is the case, what would warrant the destruction of others to preserve this?

This might be a daft question, but isn’t concluding that “US and European policy continues to follow a doctrinaire view of the world as split into competing or warring blocs based on misappropriated understandings of religions, civilisations and cultures – note the plurals – rather than understanding the hybridity and connectedness underpinning our world” itself a dichotomizing statement?

I can think of plenty of the World’s religions, civilizations and cultures which the US and Europe do not consider themselves competing or warring with. Plenty. To homogenize the attitudes and policies (plural) of these huge entities with a template of your choice seems unfair.

Its important to consider attitudes and policies regarding these things heterogeneously, as with homogeneity it is easy to ignore answering any questions of ‘why?’. If the US and Europe is happy to afford respect to other cultures, religions etc, why do you think this confrontational relationship with Islamic States has developed?

Rather than homogenize the US’s and Europe’s attitude to the entire world so that it can be criticized blankly, perhaps acknowledging that it is variegated and addressing some underlying causes would be a fairer starting point for this analysis.

I have a number of problems with your statement, starting with the fact that I don’t really think in terms of ‘Islamic States’. That plays straight into the Huntingdon thesis, which I think leads towards intellectual and ethical nihilism.

US/European foreign policy – in deed, and usually in word – quite clearly follows the dichotomy I outline. For example, the UK’s ConDem government’s foreign policy is explicitly predicated on seeking UK advantage wherever possible. This was clearly stated by leading Tory politicians long before the election, and continues to this day. Yes, there are nuances, but the full picture is extremely unedifying: just look at the some of the responses to the democratic uprisings in the Middle East (for example, why was Cameron off selling arms to these oppressive regimes in the midst of the uprisings? Who did he think they would be used on?).

Furthermore, talk of “the World’s religions, civilizations and cultures” is exactly what I’m trying to get away from. The heterogeneity of our global context doesn’t reflect that kind of language and thinking: we are all far more connected than these distinctions allow for, and the mutual influence of, for example, Christian thought on Islamic thought, and Islamic thought on Christian thought blurs these boundaries to the point where it becomes problematic to separate them clearly anyway. For example, ancient Greek knowledge came to Europe via Baghdad etc. – does that make the foundations of modern Europe Islamic? Not really, but neither does it make them Christian, even though that is what many politicians and others argue (the whole “Christian basis for Europe” debate plays into this). Until foreign policy seeks to make space for ways to realistically engage with such diversity, we will continue to struggle with the creation of false boundaries and dichotomies, and that is precisely what I am arguing needs to change.

This was not murder but a response to a state of war existing betwen Al Quaeda and the USA. To describe it as murder is silly and wide of the mark.
In February 1998 Osama bin Laden declared war on the USA in a London newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi by sending a fax signed by himself and four others, see link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fataw%C4%81_of_Osama_bin_Laden.

In August 1998 Al Qaeda blew up the US embassy in Kenya, killing over 200 people.

If you declare war and act subsequently in a war-like fashion you should not be surprised if the party that you have attacked responds. indeed, there is every indication that Bin Laden relished the fight.

Under the Geneva Conventions and numerous other international legal instruments relating to war, only nation states can be in a state of war with one another, and therefore there was no state of war between al Qaida and the USA, even if ill-conceived rhetoric gave that impression to many people (of course, this served particular interests). Since there was no state of war, and no judicial process was followed, this is murder, pure and simple.

I found your article very interesting but there were a couple of points I wanted to ask you about.

The first is your statement that:

Although bin Laden was regarded as significant in many western policy circles, serving as a very useful oppositional figure (and one we will no doubt see replaced in a short time), he was not highly regarded by most Muslims, who saw his understanding of Islam as being no less abhorrent than many Christians’ perspectives of Hitler’s understanding of Christianity

My second concern is the assertion in your title (and reasserted in your comments) that this was a murder, indeed a “murder pure and simple”. Since you were not present at the events, how are you able to express yourself with such confidence? I obviously cannot comment on what definition of murder you are working to. However, as a UK lawyer, I would want to apply a presumption of innocence (I understand you to take a different approach) and to require evidence that the person who killed OBL intended to do so and was not acting in self-defence. You seem to by-pass these essential questions on the rather surprising basis that resistance was to be expected. Self defence is available even where the attack could be foreseen.

On your first point: yes, this was a bit of a generalisation, but: the Gallup poll analysis published by John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed as ‘Who speaks for Islam? What a billion Muslims really think”, which also uses previous Pew reports puts this into a different context, and one that I was seeking to point to with my link (a thoroughly unscientific anecdote from a CNN journalist covering the Middle East, though Tony Karon and Robert Fisk and many other experts have made similar comments yesterday and today): whilst there are still many people who claim to support al Qaida, there needs to be a differentiation made between those who say they support al Qaida (for example, in terms of the critique bin Laden and others have offered of US power in the region) and those who would do anything active about it. Your question about credit I might give to US/European policy that helps to diminish support for al Qaida is a very difficult one to answer in the terms you ask it: what I can offer at best is that realistic attempts to engage with issues of concern to people in the Middle East (would proobably) help to reduce support for al Qaida. But I’m not sure this is quite the right question: should we be trying to create a downturn in support for bin Laden et al (which foregrounds our interests), or should we be trying to honestly engage with the concerns and interests of people in the Middle East etc.? I don’t think this is nit-picking, because part of al Qaida and other extremist’s appeal is to disaffection with existing circumstances, as Esposito and Mogahed showed (and perhaps the Pew results you point to show, though I have not explored beyond the pages you link to). Relating realistically to those issues – which as we see in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria… are about democracy, equality and so on – is something the US and Europeans have not done in any meaningful way for decades. The Palestinian situation is, of course, the most dramatic of these: Israel has been allowed to ignore dozens of UN resolutions that sought to take the conflict forwards, and has done so with both implicit and explicit support from the US and Europe.

Regarding your second point, I too, would presume innocence, and I’m sorry if my phrasing leads you to think otherwise – I certainly agree that I could have made this point more clearly. The US government has explicitly said that the aim was to kill bin Laden, not to capture him: ‘The US special forces team that hunted down Osama bin Laden was under orders to kill the al-Qaeda mastermind, not capture him, a US national security official told Reuters. “This was a kill operation,” the official said, making clear there was no desire to try to capture bin Laden alive in Pakistan.’ That is from http://blogs.aljazeera.net/live/asia/live-blog-reaction-bin-ladens-death at 3.16pm (I don’t know how to link to that point on the page, you’ll have to scroll down). If I take a definition of murder as being the premeditated killing of a person, this would seem to me to fit that definition. Circumstances such as war would change this, but this was not war. Although initial reports suggested that capture was the aim, my point about resistance was simply to say that, yes, self-defence should have been expected, and given the person they were going after, it should not be a surprise that bin Laden and perhaps others, including Americans, were likely to end up dead, and in that sense, this appears to have been carried out in the expectation of bin Laden’s death. I realise that would not cut much ice in a court of law, but shortly after my posting was released, the statement I quote above was released, clearly stating the intention to kill and not capture – and that seems to me to confirm murder.

Thanks, Martin, for your reply to my comment. As I referenced earlier, the American worldview is and has been for centuries one in which America cannot be harmed because “God is on our side”. I should have more transparently compared this to a country like the UK, which of course has suffered countless invasions and terrorist attacks, and thus knows better. This was our first terrorist attack by non-Americans. Rather than explain why some Americans reacted the way they did, I would ask how you would expect that segment of the population to react? I see those displays as grotesque, shallow, vengeful and shortsighted–and that is precisely what I have come to expect from most Americans.

I do not know how familiar the UK is with the Daily Show, but on it Jon Stewart and John Oliver often joke about the fact that the American empire is decaying, and that Oliver (as a Brit) can help us through this trying time as we learn that we are, in fact, just like all other nations. The sooner the better.

You are highlighting a difficult and emotional topic. I would reflect on the kinds of celebrations you are pointing to in the same way as you do. However, it would depress me more than I can say if I thought that the way for a country like the US to change its worldview was through attacks and invasions etc. (not that you are suggesting that, of course!). The reactions you point to are not unexpected, but also not uniform: I was immensely cheered by this, for example, though I can’t judge in how far it is representative of current moods: http://youtu.be/Jox5vMFASLA.

Moving into anecdotal territory (American politics is not my field): is there something about the lack of connectivity in US politics that encourages this kind of reaction? I can only touch on this here, but I am mortified whenever I am in the US and pick up any paper other than e.g. NY Times, Washington Post, LA Times. I think I caricature only slightly when I say that in many papers ‘world news’ seems to be reserved to a single column on p17! However there is an opportunity with such smaller papers that we don’t have here to the same extent, and that is the openness for penning op-ed pieces. This is certainly one way of seeking to broaden horizons and perspectives, and move away from the simplistic dichotomies entailed with thinking about cultures, religions etc. (plurals) that hinder understanding of the mutual interaction of people from diverse contexts that has informed and created who we are today.

I watch Jon Stewart irregularly but with usually with great pleasure – though I’m never sure his recipe for ‘normalisation’ with John Oliver is the right way forward!!

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